Numerous parking systems have been described and are known in the art. Most of them, however, are relatively complicated and/or imperfect for various reasons, e.g. they may not assure that parking fees are debited to the appropriate persons or accredited to the appropriate parking authority, or they may make fraudulent use of the system possible, and so forth. Most parking systems require the use of parking meters, of more or less complicated structure and operation, and/or parking cards, the use of which may be complicated and inconvenient and which may require recharging or exchanging them, and so forth. It would be desirable to eliminate these drawbacks and to provide a system which is simple, economical, easy to operate, and foolproof.
WO 93/20539 describes a system in which a unique alphanumeric code is assigned to each parking space and a vehicle is also assigned a unique alphanumeric code. When the vehicle has been parked in the parking space, the driver dials on a telephone the code of that parking space, the vehicle code and the personal or payment responsibility code. This code combination is sent via a transmitter and a relay station to a database, and the information concerning the parking space, the vehicle using it and the person responsible for paying the parking fee are registered. When the driver collects the vehicle from the parking space, he or she sends again the aforesaid information to said database over the vehicle telephone, and the database records that the parking period has been terminated. In this way the parking cost is debited by an appropriate authority or company.
This system, however, is defective in several ways. Firstly, it is extremely difficult to detect illegal parking, since this require acquiring a graphic picture of the parking areas supervised and checking with the aid of a computer whether the vehicle's code have been registered in the data base. Since there is no control of the information which the user sends via the telephone, the difficulties involved in this data comparison make parking frauds easy. Further, there is no way to detect immediately whether a vehicle is parking overtime. Such detection requires registering the plate numbers of all the parked vehicles and asking a central computer to check whether the driver of any of them may not have falsely indicated that the vehicle has left the parking space. This is certainly impractical and inefficient. With this technique it is possible to request and terminate the parking from outside the car, which is highly undesirable.
FR-A-2.670.002 describes a vehicle location system which comprises an apparatus including means for receiving reference spatial signals from satellites, computer means for calculating the position of the vehicles for such signals, modulation means for generating a modulated signal representative of the calculated position of the vehicle, and radioelectric terrestrial communication means for transmitting said modulated signal to a vehicle location central station. This system, however, is a vehicle location and not a parking system.
FR-A-2.562.291 describes a parking system which comprises a first memory for registering amounts of monetary sums, controllable means for emptying said memory so that it may, thereafter be representative of the variation of the value of said sums as a function of the time which has passed starting from a given starting time, means for elaborating signals to represent the state of said memory at a given moment, and means for emitting electromagnetic waves, the value of which represents said signals and which are adapted to be received by analysis and elaborating means. This parking system is merely a system for evaluating the parking fees due as a function of parking time, is not apt to provide a central database with other pertinent data nor to discover illegal parking, and is not fraud-proof.
It is a purpose of this application to provide a parking method and apparatus that are simple, easy to use, economical and foolproof.
It is another purpose of this invention to provide a parking method and apparatus which do not require the use of parking meters or parking cards.
It is a further purpose of this invention to provide a parking method and apparatus which permit easy supervision of the parking location and immediate identification of the illegally parked vehicles.
It is a still further purpose to provide a parking method and apparatus which exclude all possible abuses or frauds on the part of the users.
It is a still further purpose to provide a parking method and apparatus that are very attractive and convenient both to users and to parking authorities.
It is a still further purpose to provide a parking method and apparatus which can be supervised easily and efficiently.
It is a still further purpose to provide a parking method and apparatus which render the allocation and distribution of the parking fees both simple and extremely accurate.
It is a still further purpose to provide a parking method and apparatus which permit the public agency, which exercises its authority over the parking zones, e.g. the city administration, to decide the parking time and other parking conditions according to zones.
It is a still further purpose to provide a parking method and apparatus which prevent damaging of parking apparatus, due to vandalism or other reasons.
It is a still further purpose to provide a parking method and apparatus which prevent the scattering of refuse, such as used parking cards, in or in the vicinity of parking zones.
It is a still further purpose to provide a parking method and apparatus which do not require recharging of parking meters or exchange of parking cards.
It is a still further purpose to provide an integrated vehicle location system and parking network.
Other purposes and advantages of the invention will appear as the description proceeds.